Pay College Football Players Rather Than Spending Millions on College Coaches

Elite college football coaches are the biggest beneficiaries of the NCAA’s prohibition of salaries or stipends for college football players. College football is a big business generating billions of dollars per year in television revenue. The way to build a better college football program is not to buy better players, because that is prohibited. The way to become a college football power is to attract one of the best coaches who will assemble a highly paid staff and use millions of dollars in resources to recruit players by offering them non-wage benefits. Top coaches are incredibly expensive because they can deliver the best players. It is time for college presidents to face the truth, eliminate the coach as middleman and pay college football players directly.

Nick Saban, coach of the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide, is the highest paid coach in college football earning over $5 million per year. He also lives and works in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where housing costs $92 per square foot. In other words, Saban’s annual pre-tax salary is enough to purchase 57,609 square feet of housing every year making him the highest paid coach in college football. Based on the median size of a new home in the U.S., Saban’s salary would purchase 26.56 new homes per year or a new home every two weeks.

The table below shows the salaries of the coaches of the top 25 ranked teams in the country going into this weekend. The average coach of a ranked team earns enough (before taxes) each year to buy 11.85 per year. Using this metric the lowest paid coach in this group is Stanford’s David Shaw whose pre-tax salary would just be enough to purchase one home per year in Palo Alto. Measured relative to housing costs Saban’s salary is 26 times higher than Shaw’s.

Coach

School

Relative Salary(# homes/yr)

Rank

Nick Saban

Alabama Crimson Tide

26.56

1

Bob Stoops

Oklahoma Sooners

24.77

13

Brian Kelly

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

20.64

7

Mark Richt

Georgia Bulldogs

20.37

14

Will Muschamp

Florida Gators

16.62

4

Les Miles

LSU Tigers

16.35

9

Steve Spurrier

South Carolina Gamecocks

13.56

3

Jimbo Fisher

Florida State Seminoles

12.35

12

Dan Mullen

Mississippi State Bulldogs

12.23

19

Urban Meyer

Ohio State Buckeyes

11.60

8

Chris Kelly

Oregon Ducks

11.44

2

Kevin Sumlin

Texas A&M Aggies

11.27

22

Charlie Strong

Louisville Cardinals

11.07

18

Bill Snyder

Kansas State Wildcats

11.01

6

Lane Kiffin

USC Trojans

10.87

11

Chris Peterson

Boise State Broncos

9.81

24

Dabo Swinney

Clemson Tigers

9.32

16

Mack Brown

Texas Longhorns

9.10

15

Brady Hoke

Michigan Wolverines

8.35

25

Butch Jones

Cincinnati Bearcats

7.83

21

Dana Holgerson

West Virginia Mountaineers

6.90

5

Mike Riley

Oregon State Beavers

5.50

10

Kyle Flood

Rutgers Scarlet Knights

4.02

20

Sonny Dykes

Louisiana Tech Bulldogs

3.75

23

David Shaw

Stanford Cardinal

1.03

17

75 college football coaches earn at least one million dollars per year because of lucrative TV contracts for their schools. As noted above, the NCAA prohibition on payments or stipends to players means that competition for players and recruits inflates coaches’ salaries. College presidents would rather pay high salaries to coaches than allow direct payments to players. Nick Saban, Bob Stoops, Brian Kelly and other top coaches earn economic rents because of the restrictions on payments to players. Rival programs could compete more effectively with Alabama, Oklahoma and Notre Dame if they could pay recruits. This type of direct competition for recruits would drive up salaries of college athletes and drive down the salaries of college coaches. College presidents should be honest with the public, admit that college football is a big business, and stop funneling the revenue generated by players to college football coaches. Pay the players directly. It is more efficient than paying millions of dollars per year to coaches and recruiters.